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Strange Homecomings:
Hollywood and the Narrative of the Warrior’s Return
Gregory Perreault
The premise of Cold Mountain involves a Confederate soldier’s return home from war
only to discover the virtual transformation of that home during his absence. Phrasing her words
in the subdued sensibilities of the time, most particularly for women, his love Ada has written to
Inman, requesting his return: “I say to you as plain as I can. If you are fighting, stop fighting. If
you are marching, stop marching. Come back to me. Come back to me is my request.” Her words
may seem mild today but in the context of Civil War America this note would have been
considered quite forward.
Receiving her missive, W.P. Inman appears eager to acquiesce. He has observed as
friends died in horrific combat conditions, also suffering his own wounds. By this point, Inman’s
sentiments match those of many other simple men of the earth who fought for the South; the war
was about “how many would lose a limb for a rich man’s slave.”i Still, returning is no simple
task. In his Odyssey back to Cold Mountain, Inman is faced with several obstacles: a home guard,
the temptation to make a new life elsewhere, and a nagging belief in The Cause he initially
volunteered to support. These issues run through the Civil War film subgenre that deals with
postwar trauma. Their collective narrative is that there is no way for the soldier to return home as
it altered so much while he was gone that he arrives in an altogether different place.
In particular, among such movies Cold Mountain uniquely reflects the historical context
of post-9/11 America. It, and the diverse other films analyzed here, are analyzed as to their
narrative elements so as to identify common antagonists, protagonists, settings, and plot
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devices.ii Representations of issues such as war and trauma can be exceptionally influential in
shaping public opinion.iii By focusing on these themes, rather than stylistic issues, a researcher is
free to focus on the “relationship between media content…on the one hand, and a range of social
issues on the other”— in films of the Civil War genre these social issues are centered on “race,
gender, violence.”iv While these are mostly fictional accounts of soldiers from divided towns and
destroyed homes, the narratives recount challenges and sentiments associated with the historical
events and the tragedies of war itself as an ongoing institution.
Film allows the audience to contextualize the different processes for society. It helps
bring to life the collective stories of individuals who undergo similar experience while returning
to various broken homes.v Studies of actual veterans of any war note that 10 to 20 percent return
home with Post-Traumatic Stress Syndrome.vi The suicide rate for veterans is roughly 50 percent
higher than among civilians.vii The primary triggers for suicide result less from memories of the
war than with the difficulty of the homecoming ritual. Through fictional filmed accounts, we can
gain a better understanding of how society views this process.
Obstacles
Home guard
In Cold Mountain, it might seem natural for the Union soldiers to be presented as
antagonists as the hero Inman deserts. Instead, we watch the unexpected occur. His enemies are
the Confederate Home Guard that remained in the town to protect its citizens.
The Confederate Home Guard was a loosely organized group of militia that operated
under the political system of the Confederate States of America. On a more conceptual basis, and
for the purposes of this essay, the home guard represent citizen soldiers for whom the war did not
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end. As such, they present an obstacle to the various Civil War movie protagonists in that they
prevent the heroes from being able to move on, past the war. The hero returns home only to
necessarily continue to fight the guard even when the Union/Confederate battle has ended.
In Cold Mountain, the home guard of Appalachia is signified by a key character. Captain
Teague is a wealthy landowner who has employed the war to his advantage, expanding his
influence and holdings. He kills various civilians in Cold Mountain to punish them for (1)
harboring Confederate deserters and (2) increase the size of his property.
Such home guard characters are never depicted as having been in actual combat. Yet they
seek to exploit its glories without participating personally. They do this by returning deserters,
also stamping out any attempts to achieve peace. Here, Teague is presented in opposition to two
other characters. As a suitor for Ada’s hand, he’s perceived in conflict to the protagonist.
Whereas Inman is eager for an end to the war yet willingly endangers himself to help others,
Teague is portrayed as selfish and bloodthirsty. Teague remains in the community while Inman
and other able-bodied men deploy to the warfront.
Teague is also presented as standing in opposition to the Swanger family. When the war
starts, Ada’s father passes away. She is wholly unprepared to fend for herself. Teague subtly
offers to help her if she will marry him, whereas The Swangers help her freely with no thought
of reciprocation. Since Teague is presented as a foil to the decent folk of Cold Mountain, it is
inevitable that they eventually confront him. For in addition to coveting their land, Teague
suspects the two Swanger sons have returned from the war after deserting the Confederate line.
Teague kills three members of the Swanger family when he discovers that they were indeed
harboring deserter sons. The only survivor is the matriarch Sally Swanger, who was tortured and
left to watch her children and husband die.
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After a long journey from the eastern coast back into the mountains, a half-starved Inman
finally returns. He consummates his love with Ada, but then is confronted by Teague and his
gang. Inman kills Teague and most of his cohorts but is left to confront Teague’s protégée Bosie.
Inman tries to convince Bosie to leave them and get on with his life. In the forest, Bosie refuses
to back down; the two then kill each other. As a result of such violent action by a man who has
come to detest violence, Inman is a variation on a type that has been defined as the “modern
hero.” Inman is depicted as “emotional and flawed, but heroic nevertheless.”viii He is, for
example, a deserter, which in a different social context would have implied cowardice to a film
audience.
Also, Inman is never depicted as a strict nationalist; he did not go to war out of love for
the Confederacy but because his participation was expected. Yet Inman is not portrayed as a bad
soldier. As with the generalized sense of a modern hero, he completed the mission assigned. For
Inman, the mission was to protect Cold Mountain. This vision exists in sharp contrast to the
“professional warrior,” a film, literature, and stage protagonist popular in post-World War II
films. Consistently, the professional warrior did his work quietly and never questioned his duty.ix
How important to note, though, that films featuring such protagonists rarely feature the
consequences of war and war’s aftermath, only the war itself.x
In this context, it’s important to emphasize that the Civil War did not only divide the
country but also towns and families. In the Romance of Rosy Ridge, former schoolteacher Henry
Carson returns from the war to make his place in a rural Missouri farming community. The
populace has been torn in two as citizens chose to serve on either side during the conflict. As an
outsider (Henry is not a native son) reticent about his loyalties, he is deeply mistrusted by both
camps, Union and Confederate supporters. This is particularly true of Gill MacBean. Under
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pressure from his wife, son, and daughter, MacBean gives Henry room and board in exchange
for help on their farm. The MacBeans are grateful for the aid; all the while they patiently wait,
hope, and pray for their oldest son Ben to return.
This allows for a development of a theme that would be further examined in Cold
Mountain. In Rosy Ridge, Gill, a former Confederate soldier, fears he and his family are
providing room and board to the “enemy.” He consistently pries for information as to which side
the stranger served. Henry, notably good-natured, doesn’t engage MacBean. Rather he actively
attempts to help the Union and Confederate families reconnect by organizing a school dance and
opening a community school. His efforts are hindered by hooded hooligans who set fires to local
farms. Union families fear the Confederates are behind the arson; Confederates harbor similar
suspicions as to Union families. In the end, the true villains are revealed to be townies John
Dessark and Badge Dessark, who destroy people’s property so as to seize their land outright.
Like Teague, their motivation was not nationalistic, or for that matter even regionalistic, but
strictly for financial gain. As in so many Civil War films, Western movies, and American
entertainment in general, the handiest villain is the rawest of capitalists.
Temptation to make a new home
While W.P. Inman was on his way back, he stopped for the night at the home of a widow,
Sara, and her baby boy. At first, she mistrusts Inman, but then lets him sleep in the barn. As the
night progresses, she invites him into her bed. She cries, holding his hand. Inman confesses that
he cannot remain with her because he loves someone else. They sleep next to one another
chastely. The next morning, Union soldiers arrive at the house and Sara urges Inman to flee.
Inman instead hides behind the house. The soldiers take Sara’s baby Ethan and lay him out in the
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ground. Their leader, Nym, raids Sara’s livestock and attempts to have his way with her. Inman
attacks and kills two of the soldiers. Sara, enraged from the attack, emerges from the house with
a rifle and fatally shoots the last. For once, a commercial movie about returning Civil War
veterans dramatizes not only the male, but the female point-of-view. Apparently, the past five
years have deeply scarred not only those who went off to fight, but also those who remained at
home.
Inman moves on, though the film implies he did not have to. Sara had expressed concern
about surviving the winter alone. Inman, however, wants to find peace of mind as well as of
situation. He must complete what Joseph Campbell once called “the hero’s journey.” There was
a opportunity for him to build a new home, to begin again with the widow and child. To have a
second chance at life. But Inman leaves, returning to Cold Mountain despite this temptation as he
must confront the very idea of home if he is ever to grasp his own identity in the present.
Similarly, in the fact-based Love Me Tender, Vance Reno and his two brothers Brett and
Ray steal $12,000 in Union money for the Confederacy. He shortly learns the war has been over
for two weeks. With no one to return the money to, and little motivation to seek such people out,
Vance splits the shares with his company, carrying his own back to the family home. As Thomas
Wolfe insisted: “You can’t go home again, as what once was now exists only in the memory of
the returning hero.”xi Vance learns that he was mistakenly reported as having been killed in
combat. His girlfriend Cathy then married his youngest brother Clint. Vance’s father died,
leaving the widowed mother destitute. So Cathy works the farm in britches, even as a man would.
If not in the dire straits of Sara in Cold Mountain, she too exists in a state of constant
melancholia. Originally to have been titled The Reno Brothers, here is a rare pre-feminist film
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that does offer a compelling image of the impact of war on women who never heard a shot fired
but feel wounded all the same.
Referenced implicitly is the concept of collective memory. In collective memory,
ordinary life is fed via the shared and re-shared stories of a culture. Typically, this occurs
through art, including folk art.xii Clint’s songs, performed at home and at a community get-
together, provide a proxy for a culture that, however unconsciously, is in the process of being
preserved and reconstructed. No wonder then that actor/singer Elvis Presley performs the old
folk songs in what, back in 1865, would have seemed a futuristic manner but was contemporary
for 1957 audiences: ancient hillbilly transmogrified into rock ‘n’ roll.
So the nineteenth century classic “Aura Lee” becomes the 20th century classic “Love Me
Tender.” That is, the Rockabilly form, so popular with young people when the film was
produced. As Misztal notes, “Today the most important role in the construction of collective
memories is played by the mass media”xiii The process does not solely commemorate a past
event “but simultaneously reconstructs it.xiv Clint does not go to war so he is an innocent. Yet as
a sacrificial lamb, he cannot be left untouched by war’s destruction. Even the harmony of
country music cannot survive the war unscathed.
In Cold Mountain, as with Love Me Tender, the protagonist is allowed an opportunity to
start a new life and new home rather than trying to return to the old one. Here is yet another
recurring pattern in post-Civil War cinema: as with Odysseus of old, coming home turns out to
be a costly affair. In Cold Mountain, the cost is the protagonist’s life; in Love Me Tender, the life
of the innocent young brother. In both movies, the protagonist attempts to return to the way
things were only to learn that this can never be. Always, a new life must be started. But whether
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the protagonist does this far away from his roots or where memories sing siren songs of
returning? That is fundamentally his only true choice.
As if to solidify this idea, Count Three and Pray introduces protagonist Luke Fargo, who
travels a unique road. While he does return to his physical home, he doesn’t return to his old way
of living. Or for that matter even try. Prior to the war, Fargo was a gambling, womanizing
troublemaker. To some degree, the largely Confederate townspeople regarded Fargo’s decision
to join the Union as a natural extension of his difficult, against-the-grain nature. Clearly, his is an
unpredictable personality.
Upon return, Fargo’s battlefield experiences lead him to become pastor of a Church. He
takes in Lissy, a young uncivilized squatter at the parsonage, teaching her to read. His old friends
at the racetrack are eager for him to return “home” (i.e., pick up where he left off) as is a
Southern belle, Georgina. Also, the local madam, Selma. Yet Fargo has no desire to gamble,
rejecting both women as part of his commitment to a new life of faith. Here, simply, is our first
Born Again returnee. He devotes much of his time to rebuilding the parsonage and learning how
to be a pastor. His decision to start a new life in his hometown--a fascinating case of going home
and yet simultaneously starting over again---is not without its difficulties. He is accused of
“living in sin” with the squatter Lissy.xv In truth, they live chastely together, until their eventual
marriage at film’s end.
Ultimately, his decision is depicted as a boon to Fargo as well as the rest of the
hometown community. In a fabulous irony, even when the “upstanding” Christian neighbors
refuse to attend his services, local whores are likewise Born Again (at least on Sundays) and
happily arrive. At the conclusion, the local bishop ordains Luke Fargo as the town’s parson; the
community gains a church and a passionate pastor. Luke’s difficult journey is perhaps the most
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satisfying and successful of all, owing to his innate decision to both return home and start fresh.
As such Count Three and Pray offers a counter-narrative to other Civil War movies.
Belief in The Cause
Whereas the home guard represents a character obstacle to the protagonist, belief in The
Cause signifies an ideological one. The Old South/Lost Cause myth is represented as a
motivation for many characters’ actions, revealed in what they say as well as what they don’t say.
The Lost Cause myth did not create any major obstacle to W.P. Inman personally for, as
mentioned earlier, he enlisted more to fulfill his duty as a male resident than any idealistic vision.
In an interesting irony, though, other people’s belief in the myth results in an obstacle for him.
Inman encounters a young man named Junior, trying to butcher his cow and helps him. The
youth and his family realize Inman is fleeing the home guard. While the primary motive for
Junior’s betrayal of Inman is greed for the reward, it is also implied that Junior retains a degree
of Confederate nationalism, while the Home Guard serves as a proxy for that very line of thought.
Similarly, with Count Three and Pray’s Fargo, the townspeople initially attempt to drive
him off owing to his choice to fight for the Union. He returns briefly to his childhood house to
find it vandalized—the word “traitor” written over the doorframe. As in Cold Mountain, it is the
community, not the individual homecoming soldier, that clings to the Lost Cause. This may have
to do with the fact that many of them did not participate at all in combat, and so did not receive
the sort of realistic and unsentimental education that so radicalized the protagonist. “The world’s
all changed now,” according to Luke Fargo.xvi He alone grasps that none of them can ever return
to “life as usual” before the war.
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Cold Mountain as a Post-9/11 Film
Many of the Civil War movies in this sample were released in the years after World War
II: Count Three and Pray, Romance of Rosy Ridge, and Love Me Tender. As such, they endorse
an ideology notably different from that in the post-9/11 Cold Mountain. Those movies all feature
a “professional warrior” protagonist so popular in war films at the time, whereas Cold Mountain
challenges the concept of the professional warrior. The professional warrior is built on a clear
indication of a hero and villain drawn starkly in black and white. In Civil War movies, however,
both sides are composed of Americans, leading to shades of grey, rather than black and white.
It’s not surprising, then, that the professional warrior archetype would be challenged in a
Civil War movie produced after 9/11, with its devastating impact on the American people. In
Cold Mountain, most characters that we meet, other than Inman, did not serve. When Inman
encountered Junior, it is difficult to distinguish Junior’s greed for money from his nationalist
impulse. Yet it is also clear that Junior did not serve in any capacity. Cold Mountain’s exclusion
of the professional warrior archetype does more than emphasize the alternative to “the modern
hero” personified by Inman; in truth, the film questions the very existence of the former.
War, in Cold Mountain, is not a professional enterprise but an intensely personal one. It is
motivated, perpetuated, and concluded for individual reasons. Inman’s motivation to leave for
war stemmed from his love of home, his desire to follow along with the rest of the town, and
perhaps a hope to impress Ada. But when Ada asks him to return, he does so without hesitation.
In the wake of 9/11, such a view of war is sociologically understandable. After the attack on the
World Trade Center towers by Al-Qaeda, America’s new “enemy” wasn’t a country or any sort
of easily definable group. Rightly or wrongly, they were identified solely by religious/political
motivations. As such, the “enemy” could easily be living in America undetected, as opposed to
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in another country. The “enemy” is not recognizable on sight. This caused the enemy to feel
closer than ever. Further, the attack on America was at an American cultural center in New York
City, closer and more personal than in any war since the Civil War.xvii
Cold Mountain also challenges the “Lost Cause” narrative so pervasive in movies about
the Civil War that were produced before Gettysburg. Cold Mountain shows few images of
slavery. The one notable image is fleeting: Inman sees a group of slaves fleeing their master.
This is also historically representative of Appalachia. As a result of the mountainous terrain, it
was difficult for plantations to flourish. In that sense, Cold Mountain might at first seem a perfect
project to emphasize the “Lost Cause” narrative. But the characters do not display the nobility
and virtue often associated with the “Lost Cause” myth. Far from it. In fact, the most positively
portrayed characters-—Inman, Ada, the Swanger family, and Ruby Thewes—-never overtly
espouse support for the Confederacy. As Ada’s father, the minister, states, “I’d imagine God is
tired of being called down on both sides of an argument.”xviii
In this way, Cold Mountain presents a different take on the homecoming sub-genre of
Civil War movies by challenging the concept of the professional warrior and the narrative of the
Lost Cause. All the same, though, the dominant message of all such films is maintained in Cold
Mountain: You can’t go home again.
There’s No Place Like Home
All Post Civil War movies in this sample share a similar underlying narrative regarding
the return from war. Although the dominant motivation is for soldiers to return home, these
movies illustrate that there is no way realistic way to achieve that, since: (1) home has changed,
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or (2) the protagonist has altered in a way that makes it impossible for him to accept what once
was.
In Cold Mountain, this occurs explicitly, in that Inman never actually makes it to Cold
Mountain. He arrives at the Cherokee hideaway just outside the title area, where Ada and her
friend Ruby Thews have taken refuge. He dies there, so near yet so far from home. Even if he
had been able to return to Cold Mountain, the town is depicted as a different place as a result
Teague’s management. As Ada summarizes in her concluding voice-over, “What we have lost
will never be returned to us. The land will not heal - too much blood. All we can do is learn from
the past and make peace with it.”xix
Similarly, Luke Fargo returns home in Count Three and Pray, but finds that he is too
changed to truly be “home”; if it remains the same, then he must alter it for the better. Vance
Reno in Love Me Tender is told at the outset that he can “go home, if you’ve got one left to go
too.”xx Vance does return, though if he remains the same everything he encounters is different.
In the Romance of Rosy Ridge, the deceased if still awaited Ben never makes it home to the
MacBeans. He dies in battle and while he is dying he asks his friend Henry Carson to return to
his family and help with the crop harvest. The town is changed and the implication is that Ben
would have been ostracized just as Henry was upon return.
In narrative research, it is assumed that stories told by the media narratives offer, in
addition to the expected period-drama, a sensibility that draws from the societal and cultural
context in which the work was produced. As such, understanding cultural narratives regarding
the return from war can be instructive in a society in which the return from war continues to be a
difficult process. One that popular culture, even works designed primarily for entertainment
purposes, does help us to better comprehend. This research should circumscribe attention to the
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way the soldier’s return home is discoursed in American entertainment. While, as noted, there
have been changes in the narrative comparing World War II-era films to Cold Mountain, what
has not changed is the underlying narrative regarding the inability for a soldier to return home.
This has remained consistent for nearly a century. This begs consideration of whether these
findings speak to something natural about the experience of war that American film narratives
happen to speak to; or whether this is a reflection of the way Americans think about the soldier’s
return from war.
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Altheide, David L. Terror post 9/11 and the media. Vol. 4. Peter Lang, 2009.
Bare, Stacy. The Truth about 22 Veteran Suicides a Day.” Task & Purpose. 2015. Available
online: http://taskandpurpose.com/truth-22-veteran-suicides-day/
Cold Mountain. Directed by Anthony Minghella. 2004. Santa Monica, CA: Miramax Films.
Count Three and Pray. Directed by George Sherman. 1955. Culver City, CA: Columbia Pictures.
Dunlap, Robert. "Ordinary Heroes: Depictions of Masculinity in World War II Film." PhD diss.,
Miami University, 2007.
Foss, Sonja K., ed. Rhetorical criticism: Exploration & practice. Waveland Press Inc, 2004.
Hoskins, Anthony. “Anachronisms of Media, Anachronisms of Memory: From Collective
Memory to a New Media Economy.” Neiger, Motti, Oren Meyers, and Eyal Zandberg,
eds. On media memory: Collective memory in a new media age. Springer, 2011.
Kuhn, Annette. "The state of film and media feminism." Signs 30, no. 1 (2004) 1227.
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Litz, Brettt and William Schlenger. “PTSD in Service Members and New Veterans of the Iraq
and Afghanistan Wars: A Bibliography and Critique.” PTSD Research Quarterly. 20, no.
1 (2009).
Love Me Tender. Directed by Robert Webb. 1956. Los Angeles, CA: 20th Century Fox.
Misztal, Barbara. Theories of social remembering. McGraw-Hill Education (UK), 2003, 21-22.
Shain, Russell E "Effects of Pentagon influence on war movies, 1948-70." Journalism and Mass
Communication Quarterly 49, no. 4 (1972): 644.
Tasker, Yvonne. Working girls: Gender and sexuality in popular cinema. Routledge, 2002.
Wolfe, Thomas. “You can’t go home again.” Harper & Row. New York, NY: 1940.
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Endnotes
i Cold Mountain, 2004.
ii Foss, Sonja K., ed. Rhetorical criticism: Exploration & practice. Waveland Press Inc,
2004.
iii Tasker, Yvonne. Working girls: Gender and sexuality in popular cinema. Routledge,
2002.
iv Kuhn, Annette. "The state of film and media feminism." Signs 30, no. 1 (2004) 1227.
v Hoskins, Anthony. “Anachronisms of Media, Anachronisms of Memory: From
Collective Memory to a New Media Economy.” Neiger, Motti, Oren Meyers, and Eyal Zandberg,
eds. On media memory: Collective memory in a new media age. Springer, 2011.
vi Litz, Brettt and William Schlenger. “PTSD in Service Members and New Veterans of
the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars: A Bibliography and Critique.” PTSD Research Quarterly. 20,
no. 1 (2009).
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!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
vii Bare, Stacy. The Truth about 22 Veteran Suicides a Day.” Task & Purpose. 2015.
Available online: http://taskandpurpose.com/truth-22-veteran-suicides-day/
viii Shain, Russell E. "Effects of Pentagon influence on war movies, 1948-70." Journalism
and Mass Communication Quarterly 49, no. 4 (1972): 644.
ix Dunlap, Robert. "Ordinary Heroes: Depictions of Masculinity in World War II Film."
PhD diss., Miami University, 2007. 5.
x Shain, Russell E. "Effects of Pentagon influence on war movies, 1948-70," 1972.
xi Wolfe, Thomas. “You can’t go home again.” Harper & Row. New York, NY: 1940.
xii Hoskins, “Anachronisms of Media, Anachronisms of Memory: From Collective
Memory to a New Media Economy.” 2011.
xiii Misztal, Barbara. Theories of social remembering. McGraw-Hill Education (UK),
2003, 21-22.
xiv Hoskins, “Anachronisms of Media, Anachronisms of Memory: From Collective
Memory to a New Media Economy,” 2011.
xv Count Three and Pray. DVD. Directed by George Sherman. 1955. Culver City, CA:
Columbia Pictures.
xvi Count Three and Pray, 1955.
xvii Altheide, David L. Terror post 9/11 and the media. Vol. 4. Peter Lang, 2009.
xviii Cold Mountain, 2004.
xix Ibid.
xx Love Me Tender. Directed by Robert Webb. 1956. Los Angeles, CA: 20th Century Fox.
